News

Instincts pay off for Shocking's owner Laurence Eales

3rd Nov 2009

Courier Mail - Michael Manley - Tuesday, 3 November 2009

LAURENCE Eales got the Melbourne Cup bug as a 12-year-old when he backed Black Knight to win the 1984 Cup with his first bet.

From that moment he harboured a dream to win the race, but he never expected to be standing on the dais as the winning owner.

He summed it up best at the close of his speech on the presentation dais when he said that it showed what could happen "if you reach for the skies".

Eales' fascination with the progeny of Darley shuttle stallion Street Cry has been the trigger for him to become one of Australia's most successful owners.

In 2007, he spent $83,500 on two yearlings by Street Cry which he selected himself. The first was Whobegotyou, which he bought at the William Inglis Classic Sale in Sydney for $19,500.

The next one was Shocking, named by Eales so people would take notice, which he bought at a Magic Millions Breeze Up sale for $64,000 in September that year.

The two horses have now won a combined total of $6 million.

"Yeah, I've bought a few of them. I've just liked them and so far they've been pretty good for me," he said.

Eales, who originally hails from Cairns, has spent time living in Sydney and Melbourne, but at the moment is living in Brisbane.

Eales is the principal of EA Hire, which is the biggest excavating and heavy equipment hire business in Australia and he employs 150 people. He said he worked hard and decided to have a dabble in ownership.

The first horse Eales was in was owned by a syndicate and the horse was a failure.

After that he decided to take matters into his own hands.

"I started going to the sales myself and buying my own horses, and Whobegotyou was out of the first batch of those, along with Shocking," he said.

Eales backs his judgment at the yearling sales, saying he does the buying and selecting by himself .

"I just go up and check out every box and pick out the ones I want to come and have a second look at," he said.

The next step after finding the horses was to find a trainer and he found Mark Kavanagh by reading about him in a magazine.

"He'd just come over here, he had a small stable and come over from Adelaide to give it a crack. I gave Mark a ring and I had Whobegotyou sitting in my yard at home and Mark said he'd come up and have a look at him and it went from there," Eales said.

Eales liked Shocking from the moment he saw him and picked him as the one to select from the five Street Crys in the sale.

"He was a very forward horse with big shoulders, very good looking horse and I thought he could be a potential stallion," he said. "And he had a very good nature about him so I went with him and didn't bid on any of the other ones."